Skoolie Conversion Tour for Family of Seven

all right we're the laundry nickels i'm matt and i'm angela and today we're gonna show you a tour of our schoolie come on in [Music] all right so the first thing we have here is you come up into our entryway spot for hooks for hanging coats and jackets and bags we also have a switch for outside lights as well as on the other side here we've got a switch for the interior lights and baskets one of the favorite features my favorite features in the bus is our bookshelf and so we took the door off and we turned this into a bookshelf and have some of our books on display and rhianna our oldest kind of created a sunrise sunset look up here on the on the header i also really liked keeping the original bus mirror because when i'm driving and i can i can still see everything that's going on behind so i know which of the kids i need to yell at to sit down and make sure that the kids are behind i'm really glad that we left the original bus mirror and also a basket for all the other shoes because of the large family there's always tons and tons of shoes coming into our living space has a a couch here that has built in storage we've used indoor outdoor couch cushions for washability this also is light enough to become a bed for our fifth child to sleep on the storage in here is incredibly huge this we have room for her bedding we have room for books and business materials and school books and art supplies and extra food and raincoats and just all sorts of all sorts of whatever we want to be story here on the other side we have our dining room one of the things that was really important to us when we were building out this bus was to have a spot that all of us could get around the table we wanted to be able to all sit down to eat at the table we wanted to be able to play games together we needed a spot for the kids to do their schoolwork so we actually designed this table to pull out just lifts up pulls out and we have a table leaf store here behind the seat and fits just right in place like this so we can actually get eight people and vary around this table we've had all seven of us around here we also have a different another little stool that hides behind and one of the kids can sit here and we can have all seven of us around the table we decided to keep the bus seats to use for our dinette space because they are made of the strongest steel and are really great in case of an accident they also wash up really well and in an adventure bust when you're outside getting dirty getting wet being able to wash things up was really important and also with the dog is also really able to be clean the original bus seat is that they do actually hinge up and so we can store inside we can store games we can store school books they also have the seat belts that we have attached to here so when we are driving the kids can have their seatbelts and be safe both sides actually do that on this side we put in shoulder harnesses because when you are sitting here you don't want to be in an accident and end up with a bunch of busted ribs so and the seat also opens up to the bus heater the seat belt and then the corner here where we store our window screens all right so moving into the kitchen the kitchen is one of those rooms besides the the living space that has undergone the most revisions for us when we started out we wanted to just be able to get on the road really fast so we didn't have anything down here all this was open everything was stored in laundry baskets and i always like it to tell that because your build doesn't have to be perfect before you get on the road it's been two years of traveling with all of our food and our dishes and laundry baskets and that that worked really well and we had lots of memories so now we finally have a complete kitchen we have upper cupboards for storing dishes anything you name it i love again using magnets so we have magnets and we store all of our tin cups in our two dishes up in here and the cups store on magnet strips that are actually screwed to the ceiling of the bus we have these window locks actually from a residential window that just kind of hold everything in place and work as our knobs also for locking in and they're not going to be going anywhere we just put in this 4.4 or something cubic foot refrigerator before this we were using a cooler and we were making our own ice because we also have a chest freezer which i'll show you in big drawers that store tons of food pots and pans and kids could fit in here we don't have a built-in oven or stove because we wanted to keep the counter space open so the weight we cook with a um either an induction portable induction cooktop or we have a two burner propane stove that we can set up here or we can take outside when we want to cook with a stovetop so like i mentioned we don't have a built-in cooktop we use either the induction stovetop portable or we use the propane camp stove or we also do a lot of our cooking using the instant pot we have a full off-grid setup which matt is going to explain more about um so we can run the instant pot off of our solar off of the batteries we could run it you know when we're plugged into shore power we use the instant pot a lot we've even used it driving a couple times so that when we got to the campsite we were you know could all eat and so up here we just have more of like that large kitchen appliances we also save space and energy and time with an electric tea kettle again this also locks so when we're driving nothing is going to move around and as i mentioned we travel with our freezer um it's important for us um because of the different fruit restrictions that our family has that we are able to bring food from home some of it that we've raised ourselves and so we brought the freezer and it's like a seven cubic foot chest freezer we've been using it as we traveled for the last two years and it's worked really really well for us behind this upper cupboard behind our chest freezer is all of our electronics stuff that's fairly easy to get to when we need to um when we need to get closer into the batteries this bar comes off and the freezer slides out so we can get to everything that's behind it so we also wanted a nice and deep sink so though the sink itself doesn't take up a really large footprint here it's it's extra deep we also have a faucet here that we specifically show so that we can open up the window on and then we can we can reach it outside we can rinse off the kids we can rent out the dog we also travel with a berkey water filter system we never know where our water is coming from and water is one of the most important things when you're traveling to make sure it is clean and it is pure so this berkey has done really well for it it's really one of the best having it right here next to the sea also allows us to take the lid off and just fill it right here from the hose we also have down below here we have additional storage for garbage and our instant propane hot water heater so each of our four youngest kids each have their own bed and their own space our oldest is the one that sleeps on the couch because she's usually not the latest of the earliest so they all have their own bed space they can to bring their own blankets their own pillows from home they get to decorate their beds their own their own way that they want to they get to bring some toys they have also around the corner here they've got a basket where they can store their books and another basket for toys the big kids also have a shelf which they can put some of their their knick-knacks and stuff on under the beds we have we built the beds over top of the wheel wells which makes a really nice divider for things and garrison show us where you would keep your clothes when we're traveling each the kids has a basket like this and when we're traveling and we were just doing renovations so everything is right home and everything's in the house now and they can bring whatever they want as long as it fits inside the basket one of the additions that we made this year that we're really really thankful for before we went to oklahoma and missouri in june was the addition of our air conditioner before this air conditioners were just open all the windows and try not to be miserable when it was hot having this rooftop ac was huge huge very nice addition then going into the bathroom here we have a homemade custom composting toilet here with a urine diverter that goes into our gray water tank so that is all housed here and then things like our sawdust composting medium are stored in here also again storage anytime you can put storage on the wall and make it look nice so that's what we did here with the shoe rack everybody has their own pocket for all of their their own bathroom stuff shampoo and conditioner in the corner here we have a sink wanted to stick with a rustic theme so we got some galvanized pails and we custom created our own sink you'll notice it is like a dry sink it doesn't have a faucet but it's directly across from the kitchen kitchen faucet when we need to wash up here in the bathroom we just grab some hot water from the kitchen boss it and put it in here and it does have a drain that goes directly down into the gray water tank back here in the main bedroom but we really went back and forth with what we wanted to do back here but we finally decided we wanted to keep the walkway open all the way through from the back door all the way to the front so we can haul kayaks or bikes or anything else that we need to we can use this space for hauling things we can have more floor space for the kids to be able to play on rainy days so we opted to go with two separate twin beds and that has it's really worked quite well the kids also love to ride back here they'll just prop up the pillows and they'll sit back here it becomes extra living space two extra couches and so the two beds has actually worked really well and we've like really enjoyed it inside each of the beds we have lots of storage we have our water tanks we have two 44 gallon water tanks we have a diesel heater and they're under this bed here are custom fishing rod holders for storing those fishing rods on the side over here we have the other 44 gallon water tank we have dirty laundry storage and we have extra blanket storage up above here we have storage for clothes for blankets again they lock the same way that the kitchen wants to do with the residential window lock and so just lots of storage the back part of our bus what we call our garage space um it's a closet space it's a hedgehog space it's a major storage space we have tool boxes on either side here that we use bungee straps to hold the drawers in place when we are traveling we have a spot for our beach chairs which are perfect for sitting up on the roof deck and this is the ladder the adjustable ladder that we can either then use outside to get up onto the roof deck or we can set it up inside also [Music] [Music] all right i'm going to go over all the electrical stuff in the bus we've got 600 watts of solar on the roof that's six 100 watt panels up top here we've got a renergie 3000 watt uh inverter this currently just runs our freezers our freezer and fridge and then when we need to we plug in the instant pot to it we've got a power strip that runs off of that also we do have a meter the on here we've not mounted this any place yet we don't decide to order one amount so for now it just sits here it could go in other spots the solar comes in behind this cabinet back here and then we also have our weboost is back here then we've got an antenna for the wii boost right here all of our batteries are behind the freezer here we have four 100 amp hour dakota lithium batteries so all the batteries come into there got our master shut off i used heavy wire on everything i could i called for one size i typically went up a size i just wanted to make sure i could upgrade later if i wanted under here we've got the dc to dc charge controller from victron so this runs off the alternator of the bus to charge the batteries we haven't really needed it with the solar and everything else it's just kind of there as a backup then i've got 150 mpp victron solar charge controller that works really good to keep the batteries charged got the generator power the converter for shore power the solar and then the alternator charging so four different ways to charge the batteries i've got a 12 volt fuse panel down to the left that runs all of our diesel heaters and all those 12 volt lights and everything like that and then our ac unit here this is a 15 000 btu unit and it does pretty well we were in 100 some degree temperature in oklahoma and it was livable in here other thing is the diesel heater that's 12 volt it is plumbed directly to the fuel tank and then the fuel tank i have a titanium tube with the hose going into it so it doesn't float around and it's held up off the bottom about six inches off the tank so you don't run your tank dry so this is actually one of my favorite places in the bus um i actually love driving the bus i didn't think that i would be i was really kind of nervous about it at first but after the first couple of days of driving i just love it i love driving the bus this is a a 2003 thomas freightliner we have a five nine cummins we have an allison transmission automatic it it really handles very well and it's just been kind of it's it's been fun all right so for the outside of the bus we've got four storage bays the first one we use for like our water hose some of the kids play toys our electrical port these all lock we got an outside light with a switch inside so at night you can see coming in and out the middle one we just keep our propane and then spare adapters ratchet straps stuff like that and this one keeps the gray water hose and they store well in there this is the generator bin i got these lock we've got a 4 000 watt generator it's a champion uh running amsoil in it and everything it's set up for propane right now can be propane or gas i've got it plumbed for propane i've got a spare 120 extension cord here and keep the air hose for the tire the air chuck for the tires in here works really good so we ran that um again last time we're in oklahoma we had to run it it was 100 something out and that it got warm under there but sitting with the high temp it did fine i've got it i redid the exhaust on the generator and added a flange so i've got flex hose coming out so the exhaust actually exhausts outside i didn't want exhausting under the bus so it comes outside of the bus that works really well we've got all brand new tires not brand new but as of i think it was last year we put all new tires all the way around all new brakes and our roof rack was a custom build this is all aluminum it's not steel it's aluminum so i was actually able to lift this up myself it's super lightweight it's bolted through the frame ribs on the bus in six spots and then it's got a two by six treated deck on the top and that works really well for hauling kayaks or luggage or we did a lawnmower once up there so all right on this side of the bus all right so we've got our water fill here this goes into the one tank and then fills up both of them at the same time that's been handy we've got our gray water tank underneath here and it worked really well to do these um i think they're teased track or t-struts whatever they are i've got five of them on there bolted directly to the frame there is room on this side of the bus if you wanted to add more tool boxes next here we've got the wii boost i mounted the antenna here uh this has been handy i put it on a spring so as the wife hits stuff okay hey really um i've got it in stages so actually our cb antenna is up at a certain height so i can kind of tell how high stuff is and then this is higher than the roof rack so if at any point we hit the wii boost which we normally don't we know that the roof rack will miss so as long as this misses everything else is clear but it's on a spring so if you hit a branch or anything it doesn't hurt it at all but that's been the weboost has been awesome there's times we don't have service at all and the wii boost will give you almost full bars even in spots that are pretty low so we've enjoyed having that it comes in handy so that's pretty much it on the outside you

Channel: The Wandering Nichols

Views: 41,310

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Id: xIttL2eeqfA

Length: 23min 1sec (1381 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 02 2022